This presentation deals with the following issue: how poverty, poor health, nutrition and care affect child development. The author reviews a series of "capabilities approaches," including concepts such as the conversion of primary good into the person's ability to promote his/her ends. This...

Brazil is characterized by large inequalities in income, access to health care, and health status. This paper uses data from the 1998 Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios to analyze the complex relationships among health, income, health insurance and health care utilization to gain a...

This paper evaluates Progressive Housing Program; a public housing program that facilitates the purchase of a new home. The evaluation finds that the program’s package (savings requirement, voucher and mortgage) design is inappropriate if the program is targeted to the poor. In fact the...

The Mexican Government initiated two innovative programs cash transfer schemes in the last decade: PROGRESA, which is a national anti-poverty scheme directed at chronic rural poverty, and PROCAMPO, a scheme designed to compensate farmers for the negative price effects of NAFTA. The analysis of...

This paper joins in the debate on the size of the middle class in Latin America, providing an analysis of its structure and characteristics. Using several measurements, it finds that 40-60 percent of Latin American households are middle class, a share which has consolidated over the past decade....

Protected areas are a cornerstone of forest conservation in developing countries. Yet we know little about their effects on forest cover change or the socioeconomic status of local communities, and even less about the relationship between these effects. This paper assesses whether 'win-win'...

This technical note analyzes the methodologies used to evaluate neighborhood upgrading programs, describes their results, and suggests approaches for future evaluations. Local and central governments are increasingly utilizing slum or neighborhood upgrading programs to deal with the multiple...

This document focuses on four sectors where socio-cultural analysis is particularly critical for addressing issues of reducing poverty and exclusion. In the case of major infrastructure projects, the primary concern is to minimize or mitigate their impacts on local communities. For projects in...

This paper presents the principal issues related to socio-cultural analyses carried out in conjunction with IDB operations as a tool for maximizing project benefits to poor and excluded groups and for ensuring compliance with many of the Bank's safeguard policies. A companion manual to this...

This study collects and systematizes detailed, updated and comparable information about the design, management, funding and quality of child development services in Latin America and the Caribbean. It focuses on two types of programs serving children from 0 to 3 years of age and their families:...